


Chasing The Northern Wind

by concerningwolves



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: (kind of), Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Police, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Magic Trio (Hetalia), Magic-Users, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-16 02:42:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14802831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concerningwolves/pseuds/concerningwolves
Summary: When Arthur Kirkland crashes into Lukas' new life, Lukas is pretty sure that he can keep everything under control. All he needs to do is stop Mathias from getting involved, solve a crime, break the law, and tame the purest form of chaos in the universe. There are only two problems: a budding office romance, and the ghost of Emil Stielsson.•••Aka: dark, gritty and comedic by turns, my contribution to the fandom three years too late.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nyoengland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyoengland/gifts).



> I have been out of this fandom for so long (Nyoengland threw me back in with their amazing fanfic, Dereliction, hence this being gifted to them), but spite is a powerful motivator. After finding an old fanfic I just had to rewrite the thing. I had to. So here it is, dark, gritty and comedic by turns: my contribution to the fandom, three years too late. 
> 
> Please note that Arthur and Alfred in this fic share dynamics based on the whole "You raised me and then I declared revolutionary war on you" thing from idk? Season two? I can't remember anymore. But anyway, if you're here for UsUk you're in the wrong place. It just didn't feel right in the context of this fic. As for warnings: Lukas has PTSD. I'm basing his actions on my own experiences with mental trauma, and that means they may be heavy going at times. I'll place warnings at the start of each chapter when appropriate and always try to provide some relief, but please be wary and stay safe. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy, and feedback is greatly appreciated! Xx

 

 

Lukas should have known that something was wrong when he saw Mathias, grinning like a cat, waiting to pounce on Lukas the moment he walked through the door. It was a grin that screamed Big Case. 

"What, has a sheep been stolen this time?" Lukas kicked his boots against the doorframe and shrugged out of his coat. Mathias shook his head. "Tractor?" 

"Better," Mathias said. He fell in step with Lukas as the two of them headed for their desks, practically buzzing with excitement. Lukas sank into his chair. 

"Can we play games after I've had my coffee?" He groaned. His body clock was still telling him that it was time to sleep, and sunrise wouldn't come for another two hours. Mathias just continued to stare at Lukas across the desks, face like a kid at Christmas and _damnit_ , that face got Lukas every time. "Alright, what?" 

Mathias leaned as far forward as he could. "Murder," he said. "Mass murder." 

Lukas waited for the punchline, certain that there was one coming. He had dealt with theft, assault and even a manslaughter during his stint in Oslo, but murder? In Ingstaeder? Impossible. And yet here Mathias was, holding the file in his hands as if it were the holy grail. 

"You should tone down your enthusiasm," Lukas said. Then, "Shouldn't there be more of us on this?"

"That's the best bit!" Mathias slammed his hand on the desk hard enough to send a pot of pens over the edge. Lukas winced as they clattered on the floor. "We've got agents coming in. It's all super hush and important. There's Agent Jones and this other guy, works for a totally secret branch, Agent Kirkland."

The world slammed to a halt.

"What?"

"Agent--"

Lukas waved a hand to stop Mathias in his tracks. "Arthur Kirkland?"  

Mathias nodded. Lukas was glad for the chair beneath him, or else he would have fallen. Deep in his gut, the well of power that he kept such close tabs on gave a threatening heave. Electricity sparked. The lights flickered. Lukas' mouth had gone very, very dry. 

"Are you okay?" Mathias stopped talking and frowned at Lukas, who only just remembered how to nod. His throat was sealed shut. He stood up. "Hey, where are you going?" 

"I need to..." Lukas waved a hand towards the Chief Inspector's office. He inhaled and the world came rushing back to him, everything kicking into high-speed. Senseless. Dizzying. Mathias began to rise, but Lukas was already gone, stalking across the pen. He knocked into a stack of papers and kept going, hands curled in fists.

Lukas was opening the office door before he could think, and then he was in, striding right into the middle of a morning meeting. Lukas stopped in his tracks. Bielschmidt lowered his cinnamon bun very, very slowly. The constable standing to attention looked as if she might throw something at Lukas. He wasn't about to argue if she did.

"I have an urgent matter to discuss," Lukas said.

"I should hope you do." Bielschmidt's voice was thick with thinly veiled threat and dry humour. To the constable he spoke with gentle politeness, as if Lukas wasn't even in the room. "We'll continue our discussion later."

Lukas waited for the door to close behind her, hot with impatience. Chief Inspector Hans Bielschmidt was a formidable man hidden behind a scruffy bun and reading glasses. His two grand-children gazed out from portraits on the wall behind him, one over each shoulder. The albino one grinned like a hunting cat, and the blond one had a glower to rival that of his grandpa. Lukas knew that they were cousins removed by something-or-other. It was a tenuous link, but Lukas had pinned so much on it. He had trusted Bielschmidt, told him information that nobody, not even Mathias, was privy to and now _this_. This was the biggest betrayal of trust that Bielschmidt could possibly have committed. Lukas felt sick. 

When he spoke, it was in a dry, rushed voice. "I can't work with Kirkland."

Bielschmidt took his time to answer. He thumbed through a stack of files on his desk, and finally withdrew a very large one, eyeing Lukas over the rim of his spectacles as he did so. "That's such a shame, Inspector Thomassen."

"Excuse me?" Lukas hadn't been expecting that. Bielschmidt slammed the file down on the desk.

"I know how much you would love to work a murder, especially one like this. Plenty to keep you busy." Bielscmidt leaned back in his chair and wiped his fingers on a napkin. He knew precisely how to spin Lukas in circles. Lukas opened his mouth to protest, but nothing would come out. Bielschmidt continued, "I think you can do it." 

"Sir, you know--" Lukas touched his splayed fingertips to Bielschmidt's desk, a desperate attempt to ground himself. "You _know_. He was there, he was... I can't." 

"Bad blood has passed between the two of you, a shared trauma. I understand, but I think that you can handle it. This case needs you; Densen is too green." Bielschmidt's voice had softened now, turned gentle. His expression was almost paternal. "Perfect if you're looking to get a promotion, too." And Bielschmidt's voice was too careful, too casual. Lukas looked up at him sharply.

Underneath the file was a brown envelope, innocent enough if not for the fact that Lukas had thrown it in the bin last night. He clenched his teeth down on the curse that wanted to come out. 

"I don't want a promotion," Lukas said through gritted teeth. 

 "Getting away from this town will do more than help your career, Thomassen."

"You know that I can't leave." Lukas held Bielschmidt's gaze. His biggest secret hung between them like a bomb. The energy-well pulsed angrily. 

"You can." Bielschmidt laced his fingers together on the desk-top.

Lukas drew back sharply from the desk. "Do you want me to take this case, or do you want me to go to Oslo? Because I can only deal with one of those things right now."  Lukas turned on his heel to leave.

"Lukas, you're making a mistake." 

Lukas gripped the door handle until his knuckles went white.

"With all due respect, sir, my only mistake was not burning that letter the second it arrived," he snapped and slammed out of the room.

Outside in the empty corridor, Lukas slumped against the wall and closed his eyes. He could feel the furious red pulse of his heartbeat beneath his eyelids, and it made him want to scream. His fingers dug into the wall by his sides. 

“Coffee?”

Lukas opened his eyes and saw Mathias standing in front of him, holding out two paper takeaway cups. He gave one to Lukas and nursed the other one between his hands.

“You’re a life saver, Densen.” Lukas took a scalding swig and relished the brief second of flavour he got before his taste buds failed.

Mathias laughed and leant against the wall next to Lukas. “Tell me about it. If I didn’t bring you coffee, I’d have the blood of everyone in this station on my hands. Not all heroes wear capes."

“Screw you.” Lukas kicked Mathias in the shin and chuckled, but it died before it could really begin. He and Mathias sipped their coffees in silence, shoulders not quite touching, content. Until Mathias smacked his lips and threw his cup in the bin. 

"A murder," Mathias said. Lukas nodded, biting the rim of his cup. "And you're not happy." 

"People are dead." 

"Yeah, but..." Mathias frowned and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I mean, you love work, especially paperwork. I thought that this'd be like an early Christmas present." 

Lukas' gaze slid away from Mathias to the opposite wall as he tried to soften the sarcastic spike of self-defence in his throat. "Better than your socks, I suppose." 

"My knitting's gotten a lot better in a year!" Mathias elbowed Lukas in the side. Lukas rolled his eyes. It was moments like these that made Mathias so important a person to him. Thick as he was, Mathias knew Lukas, and knew when to push and when to step back. Not many could hold that balance. In his presence, Lukas could forget some of his fear.

 But only some. 

 Because Mathias himself was a terrible reminder. If Arthur was here, then Vlad and a whole host of magical nightmares would be close on his tail. Lukas didn't want Mathias to get involved with all of that. 

 "Breakfast?" Mathias kicked away from the wall with a grin. "I'll fill you in." 

 "God, yes," Lukas groaned. He was going to cling on to this bit of normalcy for as long as he could. 

* * *

 Lukas leant against the counter in Eat Fabulous as Toris ran his items through the til, scrolling through his relatively empty Facebook feed. Someone had posted a video of a monkey stealing food into the Ingstaeder Police group chat by accident. Mathias had flooded Lukas’ inbox with bad jokes. He sighed and pocketed his phone to find Toris looking at him expectantly.

"I asked if you’d had a tough day.” Toris repeated himself without needing a prompt. Lukas fumbled through his wallet for his card.

“Very." Lukas smiled tightly. Arthur and Jones hadn't even touched down on Norwegian soil, but Lukas already wanted the case to be over. He had a headache that would not shift. 

“Ugh, tell me about it!” Feliks slid into the frame then, dropping himself into the spinning chair with so much force that his monentum carried him all the way down the counter to the til, where he caught himself against the wall. Lukas grunted the vague agreement that he thought Feliks was after and stared at the stubborn card machine, willing it to hurry up. Feliks made an offended gasp. “Toris, he’s ignoring me.”

“It’s been a slow day,” Toris said apologetically. Lukas managed a distracted smile.

“So come on, spill.” Feliks leaned on his elbows like a child waiting for a bed-time story. The card machine was still processing. Lukas wondered what on earth had driven him to help the two set up a new life for themselves and grit his teeth. Relented. There was no use in trying to resist a bored Feliks.

“An old friend is working with us, that’s all.” The card finally finished and Lukas snatched it back, hand out already for the receipt. Toris gave Lukas a sympathetic eye roll.

“ _Oh_ ,” Feliks grinned like a shark. “Okay, here’s what you do. You break into his hotel room, put, like, whatever colour hair dye will make him look terrible in his shampoo, and rub cayenne pepper into all of his clothes.  _Particularly_  the underwear.”

“Lukas isn’t going to break the law, Feliks,” Toris said in a long-suffering but fond tone. Lukas began to creep back towards the door.

“It worked for me.”

“No it didn’t, that’s why we’re here.”

Lukas reached the door. The bell jangled. Toris broke away from the rant that was no doubt gathering steam and grabbed something from under the counter. He came around and passed it to Lukas with a grin.

“Here, your coffee order.” Toris paused as Lukas turned back to the shut the door behind him. “I hope it gets better for you at work.”

“So do I.” Lukas gave Toris a tight smile, and finally took his leave.

  It was a profound relief to drive home on his own and trudge into his own front rooms, trailing melting snow on the flagstones. The walls of the old Thomassen farmhouse rattled as the underfloor heating system kicked in.

 

 

Lukas sat at the kitchen island to unpack his shopping, facing the open plan that led into the lounge. A photo portrait caught his eye as he sorted the items, and Lukas flipped it face down with a gentle nudge of magic. He was calm enough now to use it freely, and so he did, opening cupboards and drawers without needing to think.

 When he came to the last bag, Lukas paused. As well as the coffee that Toris ordered in for him, there was a small bottle of relaxing bath salts. Feliks’ handiwork. As annoying as he was, his suggestions had come from a place of genuine concern. Toris and Feliks owed Lukas a huge debt—their lives, if one looked at it that way—and did everything they could to be useful. These people weren’t the sort he would have chosen to have around him, but they were his life now. It was on them that Lukas had been able to build himself a fragile network of friends. He owed them more than they knew.

 

 

Lukas stood and picked up the bath salts, deciding that this suggestion of Feliks’ would be the best one to follow. His phone buzzed before he could leave the kitchen. Lukas went back to check it on impulse, surprised to find two texts from an unknown number.

 **Hello Lukas. ME’s Office 9 AM** read one. Then,  **This is Arthur by the way. Chief Inspector Bielschmidt gave me your number.**

 Lukas stared at the screen for a long, aching moment. The world went silent. The pipes stopped rattling. The house drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

 And the coiled energy in Lukas' gut came undone with a terrible, glass-shattering scream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to say hi or scream about fanfic, come chat to me on Tumblr at artattemptswriting, or follow my art and fandom blog, corvidhugger for rambling clusterfucks galore.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet Arthur, the corpse and a ghost. Plus, Eduard von Bock is Shady™

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: Flashbacks and panic attack. If you've already read the first chapter, go back and read again because I realised I made a massive continuity error which is now fixed. 
> 
> Happy reading!

Fresh snow had fallen in the night, and Lukas was stuck behind a snow plough the entire way to work. Metallica thrummed through the body of the car, but it wasn't enough to drown out the anxiety in his stomach. The yellow plough stopped again, and Lukas slammed his hand on the wheel. He regretted it at once. 

The flare of magic last night had hit his system like a hangover if hangovers came with burnt hands and a sprained wrist. Just thinking about the mess of his lounge was enough to make Lukas want to curl up and scream. He opted for a couple of painkillers instead, chasing them down with the dregs of his cold coffee. 

When he finally drew up outside the mortuary, Lukas slammed his car door with more force than needed. His and Mathias' patroller was already there, and Lukas could see Mathias in the front seat dancing along to something on his headphones. Metallica, if he had to guess. It was Mathias who had corrupted Lukas' music taste in the first place. He smiled despite himself. 

But a painfully familiar voice called to Lukas before he could greet Mathias. "Lukas! Blimey, you're a sight for sore eyes." 

Lukas turned on his heel very slowly. His hands itched inside the bandages, and he tugged at his gloves, trying to swallow his heart back down to where it belonged. 

"Arthur," was all he could think to say. Arthur looked older, and Lukas didn't know why that was such a shock. They had last seen one another from opposite sides of an A&E corridor, fifteen and a million years ago, back when Arthur plucked his eyebrows and wore heavy black eyeliner. Seeing Arthur now with eyebrows like bushes and eyes rimmed with exhaustion instead of kohl, Lukas was struck by how little he personally had changed. He finally peeled his tongue from the roof of his mouth. 

"So are you," Lukas choked out. His throat was so, so tight. "You... An agent now?" 

"Says you. Inspector." Arthur crossed the last few paces and grabbed both of Lukas' hands, shaking them vigorously. "I couldn't believe it when they said you were on the force. What happened to your plans of becoming a novelist? How's Emil?" 

Lukas sucked in a breath that seared his lungs before answering. "He's not... I'm sorry." he pulled his throbbing hands away, curled them defensively against his chest. "I'm not doing this." 

"What?" Arthur looked as if he had been stung. 

"We're not friends. We're co-workers. So we do our jobs, and then you get the fuck out of my life. Is that clear, Agent Kirkland?" Lukas folded his arms and stared back at Arthur, telling himself that the stricken expression on Arthur's face didn't hurt. It couldn't hurt. Lukas wouldn't let it. Arthur's eyes searched Lukas' expression for a long time, and when he found nothing there, he stepped away. 

"Crystal." 

Lukas turned to where Mathias was hurrying towards them. Relief flooded his veins. 

"We can go in now," Mathias said and grinned at Arthur. "Nice to meet you. I'm Mathias, and I saw you chattin' to Lukas. You two know each other?" 

"No," Lukas said at the same time as Arthur responded with a grim "Yes." 

Mathias looked at the two of them. Lukas glared at Arthur. 

"Not anymore," he said.

"College friends." Arthur huffed. Mathias nodded slowly. 

"Right. Well, uh. Shall we?" 

"Please," Lukas muttered and marched off ahead. 

Eduard von Bock--part-time police secretary, IT genius and mortician extraordinaire--greeted them at the end of a long, sterile corridor. Arthur went in for a handshake that was politely waved aside. 

"You're the doctor then?" Arthur tried to sound as if he wasn't offended. 

"No," Eduard said as he led them through to the laboratory. Arthur frowned at Mathias and then Lukas in turn. 

"It's a small town," Lukas smirked and tilted his head towards the covered bodies. Arthur went very quiet. Lukas fought to keep his breath even. Eduard looked at them over the rim of his glasses, asking Lukas without words, his fingers resting on the edge of the white cloth. Mathias shifted under the back of his hand was gently touching Lukas'. Lukas nodded. 

"Fuck," Arthur whispered and shook his head. Lukas stuck his hands in his pockets and held them in fists. He didn't trust himself to say anything. Maybe Arthur had seen enough shit like this, but Lukas hadn't. Bile crawled up his throat and bizarrely, painfully, he wanted to laugh. 

Claire Smith looked like she had died while doing yoga: body twisted into an impossible shape, limbs akimbo, bones crushed. Lukas trailed his eyes over the look of abject horror on her face and felt his own mimic it. He had seen this before. 

"Inspector?"

Lukas came back into the real world with a jolt.  Eduard pushed his glasses back up his nose. 

"As I was saying: I've never seen anything like it. Her system is clean of all drugs, toxins--" 

"I've read the preliminary report," Lukas cut in. He circled the table, doing his best to ignore Arthur's eyes on him. "Do you have the cause of death yet?" 

"That's what doesn't make sense. Her organs liquified, but there are no external signs, no indication of how." Eduard bit his bottom lip. "I can't find a scientific reason." 

"Well, liquified organs?" Mathias frowned. Eduard shook his head with a pained expression. 

"That happened post-mortem. All of this happened post-mortem, even the broken bones. The cause of death is a heart attack, but..." Eduard pointed at a covered metal dish with a sigh. "Her heart's completely healthy." 

"We've seen this before," Arthur murmured, leant over the body with a terrible expression on his face. Lukas went cold. He looked into the face that had once belonged to Claire Smith and saw everything: the wide open eyes, the twist of her face. And the single tear, trickling out of her eye. 

"Lukas? Please tell me that you can see that." Mathias' voice was cracked. Lukas looked up into Mathias' eyes. 

"Yeah." Lukas straightened up. "It's just... Nothing. Something human bodies do after death. Or some spilt water." But he was spewing nonsense, and everyone knew it. Eduard remained silent. Mathias shuddered. Arthur made a small sound of distress in the back of his throat, unheard by all but Lukas. 

"I'm going to take some more tests and send them up to Oslo..." Eduardo kept talking, and Lukas just nodded along. He was back in the stifling summer of 2003, drenched in sweat and blood and staring at the smoking ruins of a Pulse 100 bus. The bodies strewn in the scorched grass had all been like this. Lukas would never forget them; never forget the woman who was crying although her body was dead. The woman that he and Arthur had murdered. 

Eduard's soft, polished voice brought him back to the present day. "Lukas?" 

Lukas gasped. He was alone with Eduard, sitting on a plastic chair. Claire Smith's body had been put back in the steel locker. 

"What have you done this time?" Eduard asked, already getting out the sterile thread and a fresh pair of surgical gloves. Lukas rubbed his eyes and winced. 

"My hands," Lukas said. "Where--" 

"I told them to leave. You're having a panic attack." Eduard pointed at Lukas' hands, and Lukas took off his mittens to reveal his shoddy bandage work. Eduard's mouth compressed into a thin line. Lukas was numb all over, save for burning pain in his chest as his heart shivered against his ribcage. 

"Sounds about right." Lukas nodded. He didn't even flinch when Eduard began to clean out the burns. "Can you keep this off the record?" 

"What else would I do, Inspector?" Eduard smiled dryly.

"Thank you." Lukas was distracted by his phone, another text from the Actually-Known Unknown Number. 

I found something at the crime scene, it read, and you're going to want to have a look. 

 

They had to sit in Lukas' car, engine running to fend off the cold. Lukas regretted bringing the flask of coffee to share; it had seemed a courtesy when he was making it, but now the whole scenario felt far too comfortable. He drew one knee up to his chest, looking out of the window at the abandoned church.

"I've only got an hour before Mathias, and I grab our usual drinks." Lukas prompted, but Arthur wasn't listening, instead gazing out at the rows of gravestones.  

"So Emil...?" Arthur broke the silence.

"No, he didn't make it. Yes, he's buried here." Lukas poured the coffee and gave Arthur a mug from under the seat.

"I'm really sorry, you know. If I could have-"

"Me too." Lukas sipped his drink and closed his eyes, seat tipped back a little way. He could see the dark hill in his mind's eye, Emil's hand in his as the two of them stumbled through the stinking mud. Rain, lightning, the horizon boiling. Arthur's platitudes were genuine, Lukas had no doubt, but the blame was all of theirs. Theirs, and Vlad's, and the bastard who stored the well of magic in the hill in the first place. Platitudes meant absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.

"If it helps at all, I know how it must have felt now. Alfred, Agent Jones, that lad's like a son to me. If anything happened to him, I'd want to vanish as well."

Lukas kept his eyes closed as he mulled that over. A small smile turned up one corner of his mouth.

"It does, surprisingly." He conceded at last, and looked at Arthur, gauging the expression on his face. "I'm not angry at you. I just don't want this to be happening." 

"Nor do I," Arthur agreed. He shook himself and held out a small bag, out of which he withdrew a copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Lukas frowned at it, taking the book and flipping it open.

And his heart jolted. 

The book was written in old Norse, beautiful and ancient and identical to the one at home in his attic. Lukas slammed it shut, the false dust jacket ripping from the force. He stared at Arthur in mute horror. 

"Where...?" 

"Shoved behind the toilet in the hotel room," Arthur said. "That fourth victim of ours, the one who's gone so mysteriously missing? She's studying Hamlet. The poor girl doesn't know what she's dealing with. 

"Neither did we." Lukas tipped his head forward and groaned, jamming his elbow against the wheel. "Ingstaeder is a hiding hole that the rest of the world has forgotten. It's safe! Why here?"

"No rest for the wicked," Arthur replied mock sagely.

"Touché," Lukas said.

They finished their drinks in silence, Lukas watching the huge ash tree that stood in the middle of the graveyard. The church was abandoned, but people still prayed there. The warning tape and mesh fencing had all come down, and nobody bothered to replace any of it. This was the home of the Thomassens after death, a plot spilling out from the roots of the ash. Yggdrasil he and Emil used to call it. Great-great-great-something Grandma Thomassen was buried under that tree, or so the old-town story went. To the half-siblings, it was merely something to climb in summer; at the top, they could pretend to be free.

Lukas got out of the car and zipped up his coat. Snow crunched underfoot, frozen weeds and quivering nettles snapping as he passed. Emil's grave was at the edge of the plot, the flowers on it already dead. They had been fresh two days ago. He blamed the bitter freeze.

Lukas worked through the cold, emptying the vase and clearing the snow. He would plant butter-and-eggs come summer, their hardy yellow flowers reaching for the sky, but for now snowdrops in a vase would have to do. They looked both proud and forlorn, white in a white day. Lukas wished had been able to get something better, a splash of colour. All of the other graves were weathered and flowerless. He didn't care for any of them.

On his knees, Lukas traced his brother's name. Hvil i Valhalla the inscription beneath it said. He whispered the same prayer as always, and rose to stand.

From behind Yggdrasil, a figure emerged. It was the same colour as the snow, and shivered over the surroundings like a mirage. Lukas lifted his hand and was casting on instict, knitting a shield from the frozen air as the figure ran towards him. Too fast. A lost cause, he dropped the shield and tried to turn out of its path. His shin struck the worn-down tooth of some Thomassen's gravestone hidden in the snow, and his momentum sent him sprawling. The last thing he saw on the way down was the wraith, its mouth a gaping black hole, teeth bared in primal terror.

And then it was Arthur, easing Lukas to his feet.

"What the hell was that?" Arthur asked. Lukas' gaze was slow to focus, but eventually his brain connected and the world clicked back into gear. "Lukas?" Arthur reached for his arm, trying to stop him from standing up.

"The flowers," Lukas said. Arthur frowned. "They're dying too fast."

"You've hit your head."

"I know what I'm talking about." Lukas struggled out of Arthur's grip and sat down on the same grave that had tripped him in the first place.

"No, really. You've hit your head." Arthur knelt, and Lukas lifted a hand to feel the tenderness at his forehead. Blood stained his fingers. He hissed and pulled the mitten-caps back over his fingers, noting a deep pain inside his wrist as well. "I don't think you'll be able to make it to those drinks."

"Fair enough," Lukas agreed.

No more needed to be said. He didn't know whether or not this meant anything, but some of the tension was gone from between them, and sharing the same air was no longer so hard. The silence in the car was easier as they drove out of town proper, Lukas in the back, making use of the space to stretch out his legs. He was grateful that Mathias insisted on keeping blankets everywhere. One was bundled on his lap as a support for his arm, and another was wrapped around him. Still, he was shivering. Lukas had a suspicion that the shivers were more than cold.

"Through those gates." Lukas watched Arthur's expression in the rearview mirror, noting the shift from blasé to surprise as Arthur realised they weren't just driving past.

The carcasses of two company trucks lay rotting just beyond the house, illuminated a moment by the headlights before shrinking back into shadow. Lukas eyed their shapes until Arthur drove up the driveway, gravel crunching, and the car ground to a stop before three stories of family farmhouse.

"You own a... factory?" Arthur asked as he climbed out of the car, "I never knew."

"No." Lukas led the way to the front door and Arthur followed at something of a trot.

"But all of this land, the trucks. How--"

"Four generations of a family butter-making business. I didn't want to be the fifth." Lukas shrugged out of his coat and rolled back his sleeve to examine the bruised swelling around his wrist in the light of the kitchen. Arthur chuckled behind him.

"Butter?"

"I enjoy consuming it, not running a bussiness that makes it," Lukas said, completely serious. "It's in the past now anyway. I signed the company over to someone in the city almost as soon as I got back home, after... well, I had bigger things to worry about. Emil needed looking after."

"I thought he died in England." Arthur moved past Lukas into the kitchen, and flicked on the kettle. The atmosphere was sober, but not entirely unpleasant. Lukas was surprised at how easy it was to talk as he started to clean the cut on his head in the hallway mirror.

"The power we disturbed at Aelfstan's Hill was too much for both of us, but Emil got the worst of it. He hadn't built up a resilience when it came to casting, and his heart gave out." Lukas stopped himself there. It was strange to be sharing the story he had spent years preparing.

"I always feared that, but I never... it didn't feel possible, you know? The lad had so much spit and fire about him."

Lukas smiled despite himself and headed into the kitchen, where Arthur had made drinks: one tea, and one black coffee, strong.

"I know," Lukas said absently and sipped his drink. "I can't believe it myself, some days." 

Arthur leant against the island and nodded absently. 

"What are you thinking?" Lukas asked him. 

"That we have to call Vlad," Arthur said. His eyes wouldn't leave the floor at his feet. 

"Fuck," Lukas whispered. 

"Yeah." Arthur smiled sheepishly. "I know." 

 


End file.
